


Champion

by orphan_account



Category: due South
Genre: Community: ds_kinkmeme, Established Relationship, M/M, Romance, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:55:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from The due South Kink Meme:</p><p>"Tattoo porn, please. Pretty please."</p><p>Tattoo? Sure.  Porn? Regrettably slight in that regard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Champion

Champion

 

It’s just Monday night, except that Fraser is spending it at Ray’s apartment, where Ray has subscribed to, as near Fraser can tell, just about every sports cable channel known to God and St. Clare of Assisi, just so that Fraser can get Monday Night Hockey in some form or another.  They both know that in Fraser’s ideal world, he would be watching Monday Night Hockey in a community center, on a big screen TV with the only satellite dish between his remote posting and the inactive remnants of the DEW Line.  Until they can negotiate between themselves and with the RCMP to make that happen, Fraser is more than happy with Ray’s efforts.

Idly, during a commercial break, Fraser traces Ray’s tattoo, intrigued that Ray doesn’t pay any more attention to his marked skin than to any other skin.  He’s arching into Fraser’s touch, but no more so than if Fraser had been tracing his forearm, or exactly the same spot on his opposite arm.

 “Why ‘Champion,’ Ray?” Fraser asks.  Ray tilts his head back, closes and opens his eyes, much slower than a blink, and takes a deep breath. 

 “Long story or short story?”

 “Unless you’re heavily invested in,” Fraser glances at the television, “a miracle knife than can cut through other knives, available only from Wallingford, Connecticut, I’d prefer the long story.”

 “Well,” Kowalski gives a little laugh that’s not happy but not entirely unhappy either, “it’s both a long story and a short story, and either way it starts and ends with Stella.”

 “Oh.”  Fraser, somehow, had never really thought that Stella would have figured heavily in Ray’s decision to get a tattoo.  He feels a bite of jealousy at the thought of her getting this kind of mark on Ray, jealousy that is ridiculous.  Stella had her mark on Ray in a hundred invisible ways, so much deeper than skin, so why should this bother him?

 “After that day in the bank, she always said I was her champion,” Kowalski says, smiling with self-deprecation.  Fraser recalls how much that event would haunt Kowalski, decades later.  “Her wedding present to me was a package of Champion spark plugs.  Then every year on our anniversary, more spark plugs.  On our fifth anniversary, I figured hey, this thing is here, it’s sticking, it’s not going anywhere but up, so I got the tattoo.”

 “How did she react?”  Fraser imagines that ASA Kowalski would have, as it were, hit the roof that her husband had gotten any tattoo, let alone such a bold one.  Anticipating Ray’s recounting of a tale of further marital woe, Fraser begins licking at the tattoo.

 Ray snorts.  “She loved it.”  Fraser pulls back, earning him a small but significant glare from Kowalski.  It's a glare that said _I know why you were doing that, and why you stopped_.  Meekly, Fraser begins tasting Ray’s tattoo again.

 “She saw it as a…bond, I guess.  Between the two of us.  We actually did get each other for a long time, until we didn’t.”  Ray says the words casually, but Fraser can hear the regret and pain behind them.  His tongue becomes soothing.  If he could have spared Ray this pain, he would have.

 “Anyway,” Ray adds, cynically but not bitterly, “I’m guessing it didn’t hurt my blue-collar cred with her.”

Fraser moans his distress against Ray’s arm.  He knows what it is to be valued for externals; how many times have people seen his uniform but never himself?  And he feels an urgent need to tell Ray why he’s suddenly fixated on Ray’s tattoo.

 “Among the First Nations and the Inuit,” he begins, but Ray cuts him off.

 “Yeah, Fraser, it’s an identity thing, a mark of passage, it’s not like a class thing, except where the guys and girls with the most ink are actually the top of the heap,” Ray says.  It’s not the most elegant ethnography Fraser’s every heard, but it’s close enough that he knows Ray understands him.  _Gets_ him.

 “It’s…the design is simple, clear.  The word means exactly what it says, especially in reference to you, Ray.  Stella was right to name you her champion, and very wrong to reject you later.”  Ray barks out a laugh, this one definitely bitter.

 “She was,” Fraser insists, between lapping at Ray’s skin.  He begins worrying the tattoo with his teeth.  Why can’t Ray see his own value?  Why can’t Fraser undo the damage done?  Sometimes, Ray’s inability to let go of the past frustrates Fraser _so much_ , and that frustration makes him push Ray back on the couch forcefully, straddling him, leaning over him.  He leaves Ray’s arm alone long enough to hold Ray’s head in his hands, pulling at his hair to force eye contact.  “She was wrong.  You are a champion, and not just as an inside joke.  You are _my_ champion,” Fraser insists.  “And maybe you got the tattoo to mark an important commitment in your life, and maybe that commitment ultimately failed,” and here Ray looks distressed, so Fraser holds on more firmly, making sure it’s not more painfully, “ _both_ of you failed, your commitment was a joint decision and therefore a joint failure,” and Ray looks relieved at this, more relieved, Fraser would warrant, than if Fraser had absolved Ray completely of blame and laid the failure solely at Stella’s door, because that would have been a lie.  But this is the truth, and Ray knows that Fraser would never give him anything less.

“But that you made that commitment, it’s honored on your skin,” Fraser continues, leaving his hands framing Ray’s face, ducking his own face under his arm to once more reach Ray’s tattoo with his mouth.  “Right here,” he says against the flesh of Ray’s arm, “is where you said that you loved someone so much that you took pain for her, took a permanent mark for her.”  Fraser closes his eyes.  He outlines the tattoo with his tongue, slowly, to honor it, then quickly, to brand it.  Ray somehow knows to stay silent through this ritual, although he’s breathing harshly.

Fraser finishes by rubbing his face on Ray’s arm, on Ray’s tattoo, and then pulls away, returning his face to its position directly above his.  “I’ve never done that,” he says deliberately, although Ray knows, _of course_ Ray knows that Fraser has no tattoos.  “But I would, I will,” Fraser vows.  “I will for you.”

And Ray shudders under him, and Fraser knows that from now on, the tattoo, like the rest of Ray, is _his_.  And he will find something he can have inked into his own skin, something that will show Ray, show the world, that he is Ray’s.

 


End file.
